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Filtered Coffee
1 tablespoon of coffee to each cup Have coffee finely ground, coffee pot hot, and water freshly boiled. Put coffee into strainer or upper part of pot, measure water, and pour slowly over coffee. When it has filtered through, pour it again over the grounds, keeping the pot where the water will remain at the boiling point, but not actually boil during the process. The pot may stand in a vessel of boiling water during the filtering process if desired.
This is drip coffee made in a biggin-style pot, the two-chamber percolator's ancestor, and the method translates directly to a pour-over cone or a manual drip filter.
- The ratioOne tablespoon of ground coffee per cup is about 5-6 g to 5-6 oz of water, close to modern strength but on the weak side of current specialty practice (which runs nearer 2 tablespoons per 6 oz cup). Scale up if you like a fuller cup.
- "Freshly boiled" is not boilingWater poured straight off a rolling boil at 212F extracts more harshly. Let the kettle stand a minute or so; 195-205F is the range usually recommended today. Note that the recipe itself asks for the water to be kept at the boiling point without boiling.
- The grind"Finely ground" here means fine for drip, not espresso-fine. In a paper or metal cone, a fine grind will choke the bed and stall the drawdown; medium-fine is the practical equivalent.
- The second pourRe-pouring the brewed coffee over the same grounds is the one instruction you may want to skip. Passing the liquid through the bed twice tends to over-extract and gives a flat, bitter cup. Use more coffee and a single pass instead.
- Keeping the pot hotThe water bath the recipe suggests is sound: set the receiving pot in a pan of hot water, or simply warm the pot and cups first. Coffee held on direct heat is generally reckoned to go stewed within half an hour or so.
- The vessel"upper part of pot" means a strainer section seated above the serving chamber, in most such pots a perforated basket. A ceramic or plastic pour-over cone on a warmed carafe does the same job with better control over the pour rate.
- YieldNo quantity is given, and the recipe does not say how large a cup it means. Measure by the cup you intend to serve: on a 6 oz cup, a 6-cup batch takes 6 tablespoons of coffee and somewhat more than 36 oz of water, since the grounds hold back a little.